The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Vulnerable Leaders   The supervisor has super vision. The leader knows more. The captain makes the calls. The best and the brightest know best. The cream rises to the top. We accept that there will be leaders either our “superiors” or “the first among equals”. We put leaders up on a pedestal, we expect more from them than we expect from ourselves. We judge them, appraise them, measure them, discuss them.   When you become a leader what do you find? There are rival aspirant leaders aplenty waiting in the wings to take over. They have the elbows out to shove the current leader aside and replace them. Organisations seem to be stacked with politicians who are excellent at ingratiating themselves with the higher ups and climbing over the bodies of their rivals to get to the top. Their political nous seems to be in inverse proportion to their lack of real leadership ability.   Given we have much flatter organisations today and the correspondent pressure to do more faster and better with less, the pressure on leader

Six Nightmare Listeners - Are One Of Them?   We are often good talkers, but poor listeners. We have many things we want to say, share, expound and elaborate on. For this we need someone to be talking it all in. We like it when people do that for us. It soothes our ego, heightens our sense of self-worth and importance. We are sometimes not so generous ourselves though when listening to others. Here are six nightmare listeners you might run into. By the way, do any of these stereotypes sound a bit too familiar to you?   The “preoccupieds” are those breathless types, racing around, multi-tasking on steroids, permanently distracted. They don’t make much eye contact because their eyes are constantly scanning for things other than you in front of them. When we meet this reaction we need to grab their brain. We can say, “Is this a good time to talk?” or “I need your undivided attention for just a moment”. Once we do get their attention, we have to get to the point, because their attention span is fleeting.   The “ou

My Boss Doesn’t Listen To Me   If you reading this title and thinking this has nothing to do with my leadership, you might want to think again. We hear this comment a lot from the participants on our training. They complain that the boss doesn’t talk to them enough because they are too busy, don’t have much interest in their ideas or do not seek their suggestions. In this modern life, none of these issues from staff should be surprising. There have been two major tectonic plate shifts in organisations over the last twenty years. One has been the compression of many organisational layers into a few. The other has been the democratization of information access. Bosses have been struggling to keep up.   When we had more layers in our company structures, leaders matured like a fine wine. They rose up the ladder in small increments, over an extended period of time and were groomed for responsibility. There were assistants aplenty to do mundane, time consuming tasks. The striping out of the layers, for the sake of

Leadership Blind Spots   Do leaders have to be perfect? It sounds ridiculous to expect that, because none of us are perfect. However, leaders often act like they are perfect. They assume the mantle of position power and shoot out orders and commands to those below them in the hierarchy. They derive the direction forward, make the tough calls and determine how things are to be done. There are always a number of alternative ways of doing things, but the leader says, “my way is correct, so get behind it”. Leaders start small with this idea and over the course of their career they keep adding more and more certainty to what they say is important, correct, valuable and needed to produce the best return on investment.   With an army of sycophants in the workforce, the leader can begin to believe their own press. There is also the generational imperative of “this is correct because this was my experience”, even when the world has well and truly moved on beyond that experience. If you came back from World War Two as

Leadership Success Formula For Japan   In most Western countries we are raised from an early age to become self-sufficient and independent. When we are young, we enjoy a lot of self-belief and drive hard along the road of individualism. School and university, for the most part, are individual, competitive environments with very little academic teamwork involved. This is changing slowly in some Universities as the importance of teamwork has been re-discovered. However, for the most part, it is still a zero sum game, of someone is the top scholar and some are in the upper echelons of marks received and others are not. This extends into the world of work where the bell curve is used to decide who are the star players, who are in the middle and who at the bottom are going to be fired.   The modern world of work though demands different things from what we have had in the past. The sheer volume of information available is mind boggling. When I was at University, your world of knowledge was what was on the shelves

Japan Street Fight Leadership   Change is hard to create anywhere in the world. Getting things to change in Japan also has its own set of challenges. The typical expat leader, sent to Japan, notices some things that need changing. Usually the Japan part of the organisation is not really part of the organisation. It is sitting off to the side, like a distant moon orbiting the HQ back home.   There are major differences around what is viewed as professional work. The things that are valued in Japan, like working loyally (i.e. long hours) even with low productivity, keeping quiet, not upsetting the applecart, not contributing in meetings, getting deep into the factional constructs of the organisation, are not seen as positive.   Inefficiencies seem to beg for correction. Innovation seems to be a foreign concept in both senses of the word. Doing what we have always done, in the same way as we have always done it, has eliminated most of the opportunities for making mistakes, so why change anything? Doing things in

How to Glue Your Team Together   Teams are composed of people. That requires many skills but two in particular from leaders: communication and people skills. Ironically, leaders are often deficient in one or both. One type of personality who gets to become the leader are the hard driving, take no prisoners, climb over the rival’s bodies to grasp the brass ring crowd. Other types are the functional stars; category experts; long serving staff members; older “grey hairs” or the last man standing. Usually communication skills and people skills were not prominent in their rise to this position of trust.   What does it take to be successful as a team leader? Here are nine different adhesives to help glue the team together.   Don’t criticize, condemn or complain When we criticize people for mistakes or poor performance they stop listening to us and use all of their brainpower to marshal their defense or assemble their excuses, about why it isn’t their fault. We have created a barrier with them and they are in deni

The Four Stages Of Building A Team     When do we create teams? Usually we inherit teams from other people, stocked with their selections and built around their preferences and prejudices, not ours. Sometimes we might get to start something new and we get to choose who joins. Does that mean that “team building” only applies when we start a new team? If that were the case, then most of us would never experience building a team in our careers. This idea is too narrow. In reality, we are building our teams every day, regardless of whether we suddenly became their leader or whether we brought them in or we started from scratch.   Teams are fluid. People come and go, so there is never an end point of team building. “Yeah, it’s built” would be fatal last words, because before you have even drained the champagne flute in celebration, your best performer is heading off to bigger and better things with your competitor.   So we are constantly adding to the team, even if we kicked it off ourselves. New people arrive wit

Building Your Team   Teams are fluid. People move or leave and new people join. Targets go up every year. The compliance and regulatory requirements become more stringent, the market pivots and bites you, currency fluctuations take you from hero to zero in short order. Head office is always annoying. There are so many aspects of business which line up against having a strong sense of team. We can’t be complacent if we have built a strong team and we have to get to work, if we are in the process of team building.   Sports teams are always high profile and successful sports coaches are lauded for their ability to produce results, especially when they are always dealing with tremendous fluctuations in the make up of the team. Vince Lombardi is one of those much heralded coaches and he noted: “Build for your team a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another and of strength to be derived by unity”.   Sterling stuff, but how do you do that? Vince had access to some of the most highly paid and motivated team m

Common Sense Baby Is Not Common   As the leader we have to work on the presumption that people know what they are doing. It is impossible to micro manage every single person, every moment of the day. By the way, who would want to do that anyway? The issues arise when things deviate from the track we think they are on or expect that they are on. We find that a process has been finessed, but we don’t like the change. We find that some elements have been dropped completely, but we only find this out by accident or substantially after the fact. We are not happy in either case.   Why does this happen? Training can cover the basics, but there is always a wide margin of discretion in carrying out jobs. We need to allow this or the team become asphyxiated by the confines of the narrowly defined tasks we have set for them. We all own the world we help to create, so we need to allow people to be creative, if we want them to take ownership of their jobs. It is when things start to stray that we run into trouble. There i

The Olympics’ Generation   We are on the cusp of a change amongst youth in Japan. Those already entered into the workforce have memories of the Lehman Shock and the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear core meltdown and the impact this had on the job market. They are looking for security of employ and family life, because of the fragility of both were exposed to them in September 2008 and again in March 2011. They saw the dire straights of those who slipped into the part-time employee hell of low wages, no prospects and everything tough, tough, tough.   In 2016, only 6.9% of those in the 25-34 age group switched jobs. The September 2016 survey by the Japan Institute For Labor Policy and Training also found nearly 90% supported lifetime employment. This figure was only 65% in 2004. Of those in their 20s, 55% wanted to work for the same company right through. That same number was only 34% in 2004.   There is a generation coming behind them though who will be different again. They were born around th

Customer Service     All interfaces with the customer are designed by people.  It can be on-line conversations with robots or in store interactions, but the driving force behind all of these activities are the people in our employ.  The way people think and act is a product of the culture of the organisation.  That culture is the accountability of senior management.  The common success point of organisations is to have the right culture in place, that best serves the customer.  The success of senior management in making all of that work is a combination of their leadership, people and communication skills.   This sounds infinitely reasonable in theory, but the reality is often so different.  Senior leaders, who themselves are not particularly people focused, expect their customer interaction designers and in store staff to be customer focused.  They don't walk the talk themselves and what is worse, they don't see the contradiction.   They haven't worked out yet that good customer service begins with good empl

The Fog of Busyness       Focus is under constant attack.  The speed of business makes longer term planning a dubious endeavor.  Projecting 5 years forward sounds reasonable.  That is until you go back 5 years and look at all the changes that have taken place through technology, societal attitudinal changes, business realities and logistics.  The leader is supposed to be defining the way forward for the team.  The vision of the future is the guiding light on the hill toward which the troops are pointed.  The relevancy of that vision is constantly being challenged by the market and by clients.   The leader can no longer easily keep up with all of the demands on their time.  Social media has become a major source of information and we are all drinking from the firehouse.  Meetings are numerous and suck up time at a prodigious rate.  Email comes gushing forth in relentless fashion and inboxes become archives.  "I will get to that email" is a plaintive cry from the oppressed masses.  If we are traveling across ti

End Your Fear Of Failure For decades I drove myself hard, based on a fundamental fallacy. Fear of a future of living in a cardboard box haunted me. I pushed hard so that cardboard box and I would never become well acquainted. You see homeless people in Japan and other countries living that way and it is a reality for them, that they never chose. It happened to them anyway. The odd part was that this was a deep seated fear within me, that I wasn't really all that conscious of. It was sort of sitting there in the background. My father had been a big smoker (died of lung cancer at 51), big drinker (every night) and a big gambler (every Saturday at the track). If you grew up in a gambler's household, then you know what never having any money is all about. The weekly pay packet received on Friday evening is taken down to the racetrack and blown on Saturday morning. I never gamble, I never smoke and I drink very, very moderately. Hanmen Kyoshi (反面教師) it is called in Japanese – my Dad was my teacher by negative exam

Twelve Steps To A Win-Win Conflict Resolution (Part 2)   Conflict is with us everywhere, everyday.   That is the nature of the human condition. We have different desires and thinking. Some conflicts can be very low level and minor and we continue to cruise through the day. In other cases however, it becomes a lot more problematic.   In any organization, when the machine is fighting against itself, progress becomes suspended. Instead of concentrating on beating the other guy, we have suddenly become locked into an internal battle against ourselves. In large firms these can be driven by strong personalities thrusting themselves forward to get to the top. They bring their divisions with them into the fight and a lot of energy and time is wasted dropping large rocks on our own feet!   We need to see the bigger picture here and look for how we can marshal our strength, access the diversity in our ranks and maximize the creative possibilities rather than concentrating on the battling within our own ranks.   In Part

Twelve Steps To A Win-Win Conflict Resolution Part One     “Remember that other people may be totally wrong, but they don’t think so”. This quote from Dale Carnegie sums up the problem. All those other people we have trouble with, had better fly straight. All they need is a better understanding of why they are wrong and we are right. By force of will, strenuous, sustained argument and politicking we will win the day. Or will we?   Actually, getting a clear win in internal conflict situations is rarely the result. Battles are won but wars are lost. Energy that should be directed at the competitors is instead turned loose on our own team, to no good outcome. We need to be able to deal with internal conflicts in a way that resolves the issues in a positive way. Not so easy!   People tend to gravitate toward extremes. They either fold and don’t stand up for what they feel is right or they try and bulldoze everyone else and make them bend to their will. If we want progress, we need a better way forward, achieved t

International Japanese Staff Armageddon   Japan seems to be going in opposing directions at the same time, when it comes to the supply of internationalised staff suitable for foreign companies. The statistics show a peak in 2004 of 83,000 Japanese students venturing off-shore. This dropped to a low of 57,500 in 2011 and since that point has climbed back above 60,000. Just to put that in context, Korea has over 73,00 students studying overseas but has half the population of Japan. Today, with many international companies looking to hire English speaking, internationalised Japanese staff, the supply situation is looking grim. Some Japanese domestic companies are becoming strong competitors because they need more international Japanese as well. These firms are branching out overseas because they fear the decline in the Japanese consumer population will stunt their future growth. Once upon a time, this meant shipping Japanese expats off overseas to be forgotten for five years, before sending the next one. The sho

How To Resolve Internal Conflicts   Business is more fast paced that ever before in human history. Technology boasting massive computing and communication power is held in our palm. It accompanies us on life’s journey, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, everywhere we go. We are working in the flattest organisations ever designed, often in noisy, distracting open plan environments. We are also increasing thrust into matrix relationships with bosses, subordinates and colleagues residing in distant climes. We rarely meet them face to face, so communication becomes more strained.   Milestones, timelines, targets, revenues, KPIs are all screaming for blood. We are under the pressure of instant response and a growing culture of impatience. If our computer is slow to boot up, or if a file takes time to download, we are severely irritated. Twenty years ago we were amazed you could instantly send a document file by email from one location to another. Oh, the revolution of rising expectations!   Imagine our forebears w

A Soft Skills Revolution Required   The Spa magazine in Japan released the results of a survey of 1,140 male full-time employees in their 40s, about what they hated about their jobs. The top four complaints were salaries have not risen because of decades of deflation; a sense of being underappreciated and undervalued and a lost sense of purpose. Apart from not enough money, in a time of massive corporate profits, the other issues are all about leadership soft skills. Dale Carnegie Training did a global study of engagement. The results for Japan were consistent with the global trends. Japan’s scores were also consistent with every survey I have ever seen on the subject of engagement in this country. The percentages of those who are not engaged are always gob smacking.   Why would staff feel underappreciated? The reason is obvious. No one in a leadership position has shown them any sign that they are important, that what they are doing is important and that they have a future in the organisation. Part of the re

Where Is My Praise?   The Spa magazine in Japan released the results of a survey of 1,140 male full-time employees in their 40s, about what they hated about their jobs. The top four complaints were salaries have not risen because of decades of deflation; a sense of being underappreciated and under evaluated and a lost sense of purpose. Feeling unappreciated and under evaluated are both boss failings. This is the direct result of decades of neglect of the soft skills of leadership.   The feeling of being valued by the boss and the organisation is the trigger to producing high levels of engagement for your work. Japan is renown for always scoring poorly on international comparative engagement surveys. The global study on engagement by Dale Carnegie showed that feeling valued was the key factor. The results for Japan were the same.   Good to know that we have the answer at hand to improve levels of engagement. By the way, disengaged or hardly engaged staff are not going to add any additional extras to their work